Mother of teen girl suspected in crime spree arrested

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — A Kentucky teenager accused of a string of crimes across the South said in a jailhouse interview that he and his girlfriend were trying to escape her abusive family and that he wishes he had bought bus tickets instead of stealing trucks as they moved toward Florida.The mother of one of the two teenage sweethearts from Kentucky who are suspected in a multistate crime spree of stolen vehicles and pilfered checks has been arrested.Two teenage runaways described as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde after eluding police in several southern American states during an alleged two-week crime spree have been captured. Officials say Dalton Hayes, 18, and girlfriend Cheyenne Phillips, 13, began their run from the law and their families earlier this month when they vanished from their small hometown of Leitchfield, Kentucky.

Sherry Peters is accused of taking 13-year-old Cheyenne Phillips from her father’s house when she did not have the custodial rights to do that, according to an arrest warrant provided by Grayson County detention center chief deputy Bo Thorpe. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the infamous Depression-era outlaw sweethearts and gang leaders who were shot dead by police in 1934 after a two-year trail of robberies and murder. Hayes and Phillips are accused of nothing as serious, but police said they had been alarmed by their “increasingly brazen and dangerous” behaviour. When they set off on their crime spree, Hayes was already running away from trouble as he was due to face a court hearing for burglary and theft charges following an arrest late last year. Hayes’s mother, Tammy Martin, said her son sent her a text a few days after their disappearance to say the couple were in Mississippi, which would add at least a fifth state to their travels.

She said that Cheyenne had portrayed herself as 19 and her son and his family believed her. “She would go in and write cheques, and she would come out with cigarettes and stuff, so I didn’t have any reason not to believe she wasn’t 19,” Mrs Martin said. She was wearing the same pink and brown boots in pictures posted online. “I questioned it and kept looking at the picture, but it kind of made sense,” Steve Colford said. “If I was teenager on the run, I’d come to Panama City Beach.” Martin said the couple had been dating for about three months.